


Not-So-Friendly Fire

by Jrade



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Accidents, Angst, Friendly Fire, Friendship, Gen, Guilt, Gunshot Wounds, Mentions of Pharmercy but no real content, Mentions of Winston Tracer and Ana, The ampersand means friendship right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 00:00:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13306104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jrade/pseuds/Jrade
Summary: Prompt was "Friendly Fire"Warnings: Angst, pain, guilt, fear, etc.A particular warning! I would like to make this clear: Fareehadoesget hurt, and I know this is a sore spot for a lot of people who feel like she's targeted in fics a lot, but she isnotthe primary sufferer, as it were (McCree is). She gets hurt physically, but the anguish and pain are felt mostly by other people, with the exception of one flashback scene with her at Ana's grave. However, if you don't want descriptions of Pharah being shot/hurt and people worrying about her, please stop reading now. Thank you.





	Not-So-Friendly Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was "Friendly Fire"
> 
> Warnings: Angst, pain, guilt, fear, etc.
> 
> A particular warning! I would like to make this clear: Fareeha _does_ get hurt, and I know this is a sore spot for a lot of people who feel like she's targeted in fics a lot, but she is _not_ the primary sufferer, as it were (McCree is). She gets hurt physically, but the anguish and pain are felt mostly by other people, with the exception of one flashback scene with her at Ana's grave. However, if you don't want descriptions of Pharah being shot/hurt and people worrying about her, please stop reading now. Thank you.

He was the fastest gun-hand in the world. He never missed a shot - if he took his time lining everything up, he could get a dozen shots clear through the skull in a second. Two, tops.

The problem wasn’t that he missed.

The shot was lined up so perfectly - the sniper had no idea he was there on the ground, just around a corner. A smirk played at the corner of Jesse McCree’s lips as he zeroed in, seeing the shot even before he took it. She’d be down in an instant, one less spider in the world.

The problem wasn’t that he _missed._

It would have been _better_ if he'd missed.

The problem was what happened just before he shot.

Being the fastest gun-hand in the world didn’t stop an unforeseen occurrence - didn’t stop an unforeseen teammate from hitting her jump-jets and flying through the air. The sniper’s target, desperately trying to close the distance and scare her off.

Fareeha’s rockets burned at McCree’s retinas, his eyes widening as he tried to _stop_ the shot for the first time in his life, but it was too late; the flash of the Peacekeeper was just briefly brighter than her jets as she flew up from around the corner. They died the instant the bullet hit them, though.

It didn’t stop there.

He heard a strangled shout through his radio as Fareeha’s jets cut out with a flicker, her limp form flying parabolically and falling to the ground - Widowmaker saw the movement out of the corner of her eye and swirled, launched off her grappling hook, and was gone.

For a full second, nothing moved.

“Medic!” Jesse shouted over the radio in panic, rushing forward the thirty feet or so to his friend’s fallen form. “Medic - one down, we’ve got- jesus fucking-” he swallowed back his words heavily, tried to swallow back his fear but failed: Fareeha was limp, unmoving. There was a lot of blood, and one of her jets still sputtered weakly, doing nothing more than nudging her.

“Please,” Jesse whispered, shaking his head as he crouched. Fareeha wasn’t the lightest to begin with, and the armour only added to her weight, but Jesse didn’t give a damn. Adrenaline and a lifetime of heavy work let him roll her over, sling her over his shoulders, and struggle slowly to his feet.

Her thready, wheezed breathing next to his ear sent his heart racing - she was alive, she was still alive. He saw every moment they’d shared flickering before his eyes, and he didn’t want them to end now. She was one of his best friends, had been for years, for most of her life.

 

\---

 

Since she was young, and they’d played cowboys together with a pair of foam dart guns in place of real revolvers. After a few rounds he’d put his hat on her head, and it had slipped low enough to cover her eyes but they’d both just laughed about it - and he’d never told her, but it had been the first time he’d laughed in nine years.

He’d tugged the hat off, he’d ruffled her hair as she giggled. “Lookin’ good there, kiddo.”

It, and phrases like it, would define their friendship for years to come.

 

\---

 

Fareeha’s helmet slipped off as her head bounced from McCree’s rough transit over the terrain. His feet tried to stumble on the rocks but he refused, sheer determination keeping him upright. He always had been sure-footed. Sure-eyed. Sure-handed. He never missed.

A shot of pain and a shot of guilt had him nearly doubling over, his fingers clenching reflexively at nothing as his stomach contents tried to work their way back up, but there was no time for that now and he’d be damned if he let himself fuck this up any worse than it already was.

He kept his eyes on the distance - just past that building, there was the old town centre. A large and ornate well had once stood there, but had been blown up at the start of the fighting weeks ago, before they even arrived. It would be a good place for extraction.

He only had to make it that far - _she_ only had to make it that far - and she’d be saved.

A brick underfoot rolled, but he caught the motion before it could develop into too much and carried on, his eyes and his mind fixated as heavily as possible on that crumbled old well. Salvation.

 

\---

 

She took him rock-climbing, once, after returning from a visit to stay with her dad for a while. He’d whistled appreciatively at how very serious-looking she’d been all kitted up in her harness, and she’d shot him a smirk and asked if he thought he’d be able to keep up. He’d chuckled and tipped his hat, and reminded her that he’d grown up in a desert full of cliffs. Of course he’d be able to keep up.

He’d been wrong.

Fareeha had beaten the pants off of him, and she didn’t hold back from bragging, either - grinning from ear to ear and laughing at him. “You’ve been out of the desert too long, old man,” she’d quipped with a smirk. “You’re falling out of practice!”

He’d laughed, and grinned, and tipped his hat. “Got me beat, kiddo.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever been prouder of her.

 

\---

 

McCree’s foot slipped off of a large chunk of brick that had been blown loose of a building at some point, he cried out as he crumpled to the ground, the weight of Fareeha falling on his shoulders and his injured ankle; he tried to get up, to keep going, but he couldn’t.

“Where’s that damn medic?” He pleaded over the radio, desperately shuffling forward on one knee; it tore against the ground, bleeding and forcing the incipient tears to spring from his eyes, but he didn’t care. If he lost the leg, if he lost them both, if he lost his life, he didn’t care.

She had to survive.

She _had_ to.

Something came back across the radio, but he couldn’t hear it over the thumping of blood in his ears and the whining hiss of adrenaline and fear. He could only push on, bearing Fareeha over his shoulders and crawling on his knees - something, anything, to get her to safety.

 

\---

 

She came to him sometimes when her mother was being particularly frustrating. At first, it had been a bit of a mistake - with his own history, he was reticent to say anything against a mother, but they soon found an equilibrium where she could vent and he could accept it, and he started to support her more and more in it.

Ana didn’t want her in danger - didn’t want her fighting, didn’t want her anywhere _near_ the fight, but Fareeha wanted to protect others. She knew she was capable, and Jesse couldn’t deny it - she was - and she wanted to help the others who couldn’t.

“There are people who can’t fight for themselves,” she’d muttered with a dark look in her eyes and one fist clenched. “I refuse to just… leave them. No.”

Jesse hadn’t known how to respond to that, except for to wrap an arm around her shoulder. The fire in her eyes, the strength and conviction in her voice - he’d been so proud of his friend in that moment.

He hadn’t known exactly what to say - not then, and not when her application had been denied, either. Ana hadn’t said anything about it. Neither had Fareeha. Anyone could have seen the looks in their eyes, though; figured out why they refused to be in the same room after that.

Not that it had lasted long, before Ana had been killed in action. Fareeha _had_ showed up to the funeral.

She always refused to just let things go. She always fought for them.

“Sorry, kiddo,” he’d whispered at her elbow. She’d only nodded at first, held it in for a while longer - she was so much like her mother in some ways. Others had come over and asked, and he’d told them to go on. They’d join the ceremony later.

When it was just the two of them left, she’d finally collapsed, sobbing angry shouts at the tombstone and balling up her fists, and Jesse had just stood behind her with a hand on her shoulder and silently cried.

Even if they hadn’t talked, he knew she had never given up. She’d never stopped fighting. Now, any chance of making things up with her mother had been taken away from her.

“Sorry, kiddo.” The barest whisper again.

 

\---

 

She tumbled off of his shoulders, limp and heavy - more a suit of armour filled with flesh at this point than being reminiscent of a person at all, really. McCree couldn’t stop her fall but he could slow it, pull her around and catch her torso from hitting the ground at least - a sharp fragment of metal at her back where his bullet had torn through, stabbed into his leg and brought forth a fresh wave of tears, accentuated by the look in her eyes.

Half-open, parted, but blank and unfocused. She stared ahead into the distance, gasping and wheezing.

“C’mon,” he urged through a choked throat, fighting back the very edges of total frantic madness. He could barely hang on - even to consciousness at this point, vision starting to close in from the outside. “C’mon Fareeha, come on kiddo, you can _fight_ this. You- god, I’m so sorry,” he whispered, holding her in close. “I’m so sorry, kiddo.”

The sputtering jet burned holes in his jeans, singed his skin, but he didn’t care; his nose was full of the scent of fire and char and blood, but his mind only had room for one single thought. She had to make it.

He only took a second to hold her in close to his chest before, bleeding and crying, he kept crawling forward and dragging her with him. He wasn’t leaving her. He refused.

 

\---

 

Angela’s knuckles almost glowed white with the force with which she clamped them down on the railing at the dropship’s edge. The call had just come through - McCree hadn’t said _who_ was injured, but it probably wasn’t him.

That only left a few options. Tracer, Winston, Fareeha.

Angela had never in her life wished physical harm upon someone, and it was turning her gut to do so now, because she hoped with every fiber of her being that it was one of the former two rather than the Egyptian soldier.

They hadn’t been _together_ for very long, not technically, but they’d known each other for a fair while as friends. A few months ago, they’d tentatively progressed to more than just friends - slowly, cautiously, and fairly worried about the possibility of others finding out.

It had all started out over a movie - a brush of the hands, a look that lasted a little longer than normal, a moment which had encapsulated the desires that had been building for some time. A slow, tentative, hesitant, almost frightened kiss.

It had been wonderful.

Now her knuckles were white against the railing, because McCree hadn’t spoken in a minute, and his last words hadn’t been encouraging, just demanding a medic again. He was a practiced combatant and field operative - for him to use harsh language on the radio was commonplace. For him to be distraught was certainly _not._

There was a tight, heavy, oily sensation in Angela’s gut even before the dropship crested a small building, bullets spattering uselessly off of its hull, because she knew what Jesse’s frantic tones had meant. He liked Winston well enough, and he was fairly close friends with Lena, but he wouldn’t have lost the ability to communicate over them.

A piece of Angela’s heart broke as the dropship’s engines whirred louder, lifting it over a crumbling and bombed-out rooftop, but they weren’t loud enough to block out Jesse’s screams of anguish. He shrieked and shouted, and she saw him - lurching forward on his hands and knees, mechanical arm stretched backward and locked onto one of the shoulder-loops of Fareeha’s Raptora suit.

She was limp, her head lolling but not in the way a corpse’s would - it rolled back and forth, and gave Angela the barest moment of respite from horror. She was still alive. _She was still alive._

Then Jesse screamed again, collapsing from exertion, and Angela didn’t delay for even another half-second. She threw herself from the dropship, glowing wings spreading wide behind her as she sped toward the pair on the ground.

Immediately her fingers flew to their necks, assessing vitals; they were alive, but not necessarily by much. Cold terror clamped around her heart momentarily, but as the dropship came in behind her and blasted her with hot air and blown dirt, the fear gave way to years of experience with battlefield triage.

“Get them into the ship,” she instructed briskly, her Caduceus staff already glowing to keep them stabilized, but there were things which it could accomplish and things it couldn’t. Injuries it could heal, and others it couldn’t. It would heal Fareeha’s bullet wound, yes - but where would the bullet be? Where was it now? It wouldn’t be dissolved by the staff, it would still be lodged within her.

Angela inspected the entry wound. There was no exit, which was a mixed blessing. They were the worse of the two wounds, without fail, which meant Fareeha had been saved some amount of bleeding - but it meant the bullet, if there was one, was still lodged inside.

It depended very much on who had shot her. Laser or pulse weaponry left behind no rounds to be eliminated, but this didn’t look like that sort of injury. This looked like a projectile weapon, something heavy, a rifle perhaps.

She moved on to Jesse then as the dropship lifted off, speeding them back toward the makeshift base. His wounds weren’t from bullets, but seemed to be from close-quarters combat, or just carrying Fareeha - gashes and bruises. He groaned weakly as she gently probed some of his injuries, but he didn’t actually respond.

Her knuckles were white again, but this time gripping the shaft of her staff as it streamed healing energy to them, one at a time, but they would both need more than it alone in order to see it through the day.

 

\---

 

The camp was awaiting their arrival - just a small aid station, but the O.R. was already prepped. O.R., they called it - the Operating Room. It was a tent, with canvas sides and hanging lanterns because insurgents had taken out the camp’s generators and they had yet to be repaired.

It was awful. Fareeha let out a weak whimper as Angela escorted her stretcher into the tent, and Angela’s hand trembled on the rail. She could only think of how Fareeha whispered into her ear, so sweetly and softly, one hand entangled in her hair. She could only think of those gorgeous dark eyes, so intense but not in an intimidating way, and how horrid they looked, crazed and unfocused right now.

She was sure it would end when she picked up the scalpel, but at the moment her heart pounded in her throat as she tried desperately to swallow, and not to cry.

The nurses weren’t used to seeing the doctor so affected. She was normally a bastion of placidity and calm, perfectly in control - of the room, and of the camp as well. Her demeanor had changed a little when her friends had come to visit, running some operations nearby, but they’d never seen anything like this before.

Angela took a cloth from one of them and wiped the beads of sweat from Fareeha’s face. A smile faltered on her lips as the soldier didn’t react or respond in the slightest; no sigh of relief, no expression of contentment.

She stripped off the Raptora armour in record time, and could only think darkly that this might be the most important and least enjoyable time she had ever removed it. Hopefully _would_ ever remove it.

That thought refused to leave.

As she disengaged latches, starting on Fareeha’s arm so the nurses could run an I.V., Angela couldn’t pull her mind away from _next time._ The next time Fareeha caught a bullet, or a blast, or the sharp knock of a rifle butt. Her focus swirled on it darkly, painfully, drying her mouth and burning her eyes.

Fareeha was bared down to a pair of Helix-issued briefs and a tank top, cut off just below the breast by one of the nurses, laying face-down, and the wound looked…

...horrible.

Right next to her spine, oozing dark blood and with glittering fragments of metal from her armour embedded in it - parts had healed over slightly and clung to the shrapnel, and the bullet would be inside.

Angela took a deep breath, but couldn’t manage to force it to be a calm one. Her heart clenched rapidly, painfully, not hammering against her ribs the way it usually did when Fareeha was near, but retreating away from it all and trying to bury itself in her chest.

“Scalpel.”

The word was soft, but not for the usual reasons. Not a soft word of command, controlling, beginning the operation; it was a plea.

_Let her be alright. Let me be alright._

The nurse held out the tool, sterilized already and glinting in the hanging lanterns of the tent which shook slightly under the dull thump of a distant explosion. For a moment afterward, nothing moved.

Angela’s hand trembled as she reached out for the scalpel. Her fingers brushed the metal, trembling still; she steeled herself and took it firmly in her grasp.

Her grip held steady.

Refusing to sigh out her breath, the doctor went to work; a neat incision began to open up the site of the damage, leaving fragments of debris to be cleared away later - the first priority was the bullet.

The nurses held their breath as well. They’d never seen a tear on the doctor’s face, but they slid freely now down dirtied cheeks and into gritted teeth.

Her hands, though - her hands never wavered, never faltered, never trembled. Not when she was extracting the barest shard of shrapnel from a quarter-inch away from the patient’s spinal cord. Not when the patient’s heart-rate spiked. Not when the lights flickered from a bomb going off somewhere nearby.

They didn’t tremble again, not when the patient was escorted out of the operating room and the next one wheeled in. They didn’t tremble for hours of slow and meticulous work, removing bullets and shrapnel from one, and fixing charred flesh and deep lacerations and torn ligaments on the other.

When she was done, as McCree was wheeled out of the tent, Mercy dropped the scalpel to the floor and left without a word. Her hands shook constantly as she washed them, dried them, dragged them across her face, stifled her cries by clasping at her own mouth.

Only time would tell.

She was exhausted, but knew she wouldn’t sleep. She gave herself five minutes. Then she went right to the recovery room and sat between the beds, one hand on each one, knuckles white as she gripped at the rails.

 

\---

 

Jesse was the second one to wake up. The first pair of eyes he saw were Angela’s, the piercing gaze of a doctor quickly giving way to the sad and soft one of an old friend.

At her elbow, Fareeha’s eyes, instantly recognizable even without the tattoo, looking just as determined as ever.

A wordless cry of joy as he tried and failed to push himself upright in bed - he was informed he’d been unconscious for three days. Fareeha had regained consciousness in a little over twelve hours.

His joy was short-lived, though, as his eyes slid from his two friends down to the wheelchair Fareeha was in, as she reached out and took his hand, as she squeezed it tight, and he knew what it meant, and he knew whose fault it was.

A momentary flicker, his eyes up to the doc’s, but she barely had to move her head in a shake - it was written there on her face already, and he pulled his hand away with a choked noise. It was a comforting gesture, but he didn’t deserve comfort after what he’d done.

He was shocked by a smack, solid and instant, right to his jaw. His head snapped over instinctively and he looked back into Fareeha’s burning eyes as she strained out of the wheelchair, pulling herself to tilt forward with one hand. With the other - without breaking eye contact and without speaking - she slowly and deliberately grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. She nodded, just barely, just the tiniest tip of the chin.

He knew he’d never forgive himself, though. Even if she did. Even if nothing came of it - if his worst fears proved to be only paranoia, if Fareeha’s wound recovered to the point where she could walk again, or if she received implants or prosthetics to give her the ability; if she ended up better off than she’d started, he knew he’d never forgive himself.

...but she didn’t deserve to be burdened with that.

“L-”

The word caught in his throat, his mind filled with burning jets and gunshot flashes, strangled cries and blood and unfocused eyes, and his nose was full of the scent of fire and cordite again, but she deserved better than to be burdened with that.

“Lookin’ good, kiddo,” he managed to force out through a strained throat, and plastered the weakest and saddest excuse for a smile on his face.

He knew in an instant that she’d seen right through it. She was smart like that - she knew people, saw through them like glass and always had. She just shook her head a little bit, frowning slightly as her eyes spilled over with tears, but she refused to let go of his hands. Just leaned forward until her head was on his shoulder.

Wide-eyed and staring blankly up at the ceiling, Jesse’s other hand rose instinctively to ruffle her hair, and all he could ask himself was where to go from here.

For the first time in his life, he wasn’t sure he knew the answer.

“We weren’t sure you’d make it through.” Angela's voice.

He let out a rough laugh, one ground raw at the edges by fear and pain but he forced through it - he always had. Although he had to admit, it had been a long time since anything had hurt this bad, because Fareeha kept holding his hand.

“Yeah.” His teeth clenched down hard enough that he thought he might crack one, but he forced the words out anyway. They hurt, but he deserved that. What he _didn’t_ deserve was forgiveness and a comforting hand holding his. “Bad spot to get shot.”

“Not _her,”_ Angela shook her head softly, frowning. Her hand met his on top of Fareeha’s head, just laying overtop of it as the soldier nodded against his shoulder. “You. Your- Jesse, your heart gave out _twice_. We had to restart it, and even then, it…”

The cowboy laughed, shaking his head. “Ah. Take more’n that to kill me, heh.”

Even as he said it, he couldn’t help but think that maybe they would have been better off if it had been three times instead of two. Or four, or five, or however many it took to _work._

He knew that was why it had happened, too. Fareeha had recovered quickly. She didn’t want to die.

After shooting his own friend in the back, though, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to live anymore.

She refused to let go of his hand, though. She held it even now, in both of hers.

“Been out of the desert too long, old man,” she croaked into his arm, shaking her head with a rough and low laugh. “Falling out of practice.”

McCree nodded, tears slipping down his cheek. “Yeah,” he whispered. “Reckon I am. Might… might be ‘bout time to hang up my h- my hat.”

He let his eyes slide closed, because it didn’t really matter whether he _wanted_ to live or die; Mercy never lost a patient, not hardly. Once in a blue moon, but he knew he didn’t deserve that kind of luck.

No, he deserved to live with it.

One day - one day, even - he could maybe learn to forgive himself.

He knew that it wouldn’t be for a damn long time coming, though, but the feeling of two hands squeezing at his made him feel like he might not have a choice in the matter.

The slightest smile came to his lips at the thought as, for the first time since awakening, he squeezed their hands back.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to take a minute to cover something: why the fic ends up mostly focused on McCree, and the answer's pretty simple but it may not be exactly what it seems at first: sexism.
> 
> A lot of people write strong female characters getting taken down, getting hurt, ending up vulnerable or dead, and why? I'm not saying that sexism is the driving force behind any given single plot or fic, and I really don't think it is, but I do think that it's the impetus behind the overwhelming wave of that trope in media. It's a trope that's so big it's even a dozen different tropes! From Dead Lesbian Syndrome to Vasquez Always Dies, there have been sheaves and sheaves of work on the prevalence of badass ladies being established only to be not just killed but _destroyed_.
> 
> Who gets hurt, here? Physically, Fareeha, sure, but she survives it. Of course she does, she's been shot before. Mentally, Angela, yeah to an extent - definitely. She's scared for her friends. But she's a doctor, she's a combat medic, and she's been doing this for years. From Overwatch onward, she's been operating on people she cared for and loved, she's been holding their lives in her hands, and she's been able to cope with it. It might hurt for a bit and it certainly does, but she can get through it.
> 
> McCree, though? When do you think the last time is that he shot a friend? Someone he loved?
> 
>  _That's_ why I focused on him - because he's the one hurting in this. Not to downplay the others' pain, at all - they definitely got hurt, they did, but they managed to get through it. He didn't. At least, not within the limited scope this story presents. 
> 
> It is, I suppose, half a resistance to the common tropes of focusing the destruction on the women, and half a stylistic choice just because I didn't want to write yet another "Fareeha gets injured and/or killed and Angela can't deal with it" story. Not that I think they're inherently bad, or anything like that, but I think there are other people writing those stories. This one, though? This isn't about that. This isn't about Angela's sudden realization that Fareeha's a soldier and might get hurt, that she's mortal and might die - this isn't about that because Angela _knows_ that, at least here. This story is about something else.
> 
> Okay, that end note was more of a rant than I intended. It may sound like I have ill thoughts or feelings or intentions toward fellow authors for writing certain stories or types of stories - I really don't. I have some ill thoughts about the society as a whole which has led to the prevalence of these tropes, but that's not something any one of us can change. It's something we can slowly and collectively evolve, though, and maybe this is an effort of mine toward that. Toward showing something in a similar vein that doesn't focus on- well, y'know. I'm sorry, I'm definitely ranting now, heh, and I should stop - so, I will (but feel free to ask me and I'll happily say more).
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it, folks! Not exactly a sad ending, in my opinion; yes, McCree's at a low point, but it can get better. Trust me when I say even being suicidal can get better, heh, my life would look very very different if it couldn't! So I do think this counts as angst, but I also hope it's not overall depressing. Yes, he's hurt, but he can heal.
> 
> ...and he's got a pair of really great friends who are there to help him along the way.
> 
> I hope you liked this, and if you did - or if you didn't - you should take a glance at some of the offerings of the others in this challenge with me, in the collection this is a part of. There are some really great pieces of work in there, folks - if your heart can take it. And if you need a breather? Well, we did a [No-Angst challenge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12567276/chapters/28623828) in November! So you can give that a look too for some happier stuff, heh :D
> 
> Have a great day, folks!


End file.
